


Dress-up

by Prochytes



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-29
Updated: 2011-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:26:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Having to stand up just makes it worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dress-up

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers to the end of S3. Dark themes, humiliation, and torture. Written for dark_fest on LJ in 2011.

Morgana wonders, as she has for hours, exactly how much more Gwen can endure. It is in the nature of this exercise that it cannot be hurried; the precise duration is, perforce, imponderable. The motions of the hale body share a sameness: the foot advanced as a dance begins, the arm crooked to receive a falcon... so many perfect, empty, gestures, frescoing the halls of Morgana’s life. It is the body’s fatigue and failure that throws up surprises.

 

Morgana’s reverie is broken as Gwen shudders and buckles, barely able to hold herself upright. The moment has not arrived. Gwen still stands. But the whetted pain has goaded her into lifting her head, bowed against Morgana’s gaze these many hours. Morgana smiles before she can avert her eyes.

 

“You are very strong, Gwen. I never expected you to last like this.”

 

Gwen runs a tongue over her cracked lips. “I am a blacksmith’s daughter, my lady.” Calloused fingers tense against the wood. “Come down from your high chair, and I will show you strength.”

 

Such bravado from a girl trembling on the verge of exhaustion. Morgana is half-tempted to rise to Gwen’s challenge, expose her weakness. The nature of the exercise does not permit that, though, and it would be an unnecessary risk. Morgana has her sword and her magic, true. But Morgause fell to a doddering physician and his lackey, and Gwen has always been good at concealing strength.

 

“The offer still stands, Gwen.”

 

“Yes, my lady.” Gwen straightens her back once more. “As do I.”

 

“But for how long? You are so tired, Gwen. Are you sure you understand the terms?”

 

Gwen’s body, naked beneath the yoke across her shoulders, is very beautiful. Morgana notes this fact. It moves her neither to pity nor to lust. Morgana does not recall the last time she truly _felt_ anything. Her thoughts of late have had the quality of the illuminations in the margin of Geoffrey’s manuscripts. Their hues have been vivid, often garish; their detail and involutions, meticulous. But there has been no depth to them, no depth at all. Does that body wrack Arthur’s dreams?

 

“Very, my lady. If I ask for water, or for food, or for rest, you will give what I ask. And then you will kill one of the knights you took with me. And if I swoon to these cold stones before you... then, my lady, you will butcher five of them.” The brown eyes hold Morgana’s without flinching, now. “But still I stand, and still I do not ask. You will not break me. Arthur will come before I fall.”

 

“Perhaps he will. That is what he does, after all. Save the day. If only my brother knew what to do with it once he had. Camelot is piled to the rafters with rotting days the House of Pendragon  has hoarded. I speak only what your own heart tells you, Gwen. Arraign me as a liar if that is not so.”

 

Gwen bites her lip, and looks away, into the dark corners of the hall. Morgana’s smile widens.

 

“I give thanks every day that the magic has made me free.”

 

Gwen rocks back and forth. For a moment, Morgana thinks that the strain has broken her, at last. Then she realizes that her erstwhile maid is convulsed with silent laughter.

 

“Free? The magic did not free you, my lady Morgana. It just lets you have others join you in your cage.” Gwen gestures awkwardly at the crumbling chamber around them. “I stand here in your hall, my lady, and know it for the mirror of your mind. The world within becomes the world without, so Gaius says. And all this world holds is a spent girl, buckling beneath her burden by a tyrant’s throne.”

 

From each arm of Gwen’s yoke, there hangs a chain. At the end of each chain, there hangs an iron crown. The petty kings of old liked their regalia.

 

All that is mined with slow labour from the earth yearns at its core to return there. Morgana reaches out to that desire in the iron, and makes it grow. Gwen winces as the weight on her shoulders waxes, but smiles around the clenching of her teeth. “The Morgana I served, my lady, needed no spells to win her arguments.”

 

Morgana masters herself with difficulty. She has not, it would seem, forgotten altogether how to feel.  She shrugs.

 

“Enough. The ‘argument’, as you call it, Gwen, is already won.  I...”

 

Sudden pain sears Morgana’s head. The dweomer-locked gates below have just been breached. They should have resisted Arthur’s assault for longer. Morgana has noted that wild contingencies have found a way of gathering in her half-brother’s wake.

 

“It seems that you were right, Gwen. Your day is saved.” Morgana rises from her throne, and descends the dais. “I shall leave you to the pondering of my lesson.”

 

“What lesson is this, my lady? That Vivienne’s daughter has dwindled to a common torturer?”

 

Morgana turns at the door. “By no means, Gwen. You will be a queen, one day. My sight has shown me. When you are, the decision of my chamber – how you will face the sacrifice that only you can make – is not one from which your paladin can protect you. Enjoy your rescue, Gwen. But know that until you stand again within this room, your hands stained, one way or another, with knightly blood... your robes will not be a queen’s. They will be dress-up.”

 

Brocade whispers down the corridor, as she leaves.

 

FINIS


End file.
